Strip project’s fire safety flaws fixed

Some deficient work at the Cosmopolitan tower under construction on the Strip has been corrected, but corresponding paperwork -- which documents how each repair restores the building's fire safety -- does not yet appear in Clark County's online database, according to an official from the county's building division.

Greg Franklin said Wednesday that workers had fixed fire-rated doors -- which had been altered in a way that cancelled their ability to withstand fire -- and a county inspector verified the fixes on Feb. 20. But a lag in data entry is the reason the inspector's updated report is not yet public, said Franklin, who is assistant director of Clark County Development Services, in charge of the building division. The Review-Journal reported Wednesday on several types of deficient work at the construction site, just north of the CityCenter project.

Franklin also clarified the location of the formerly impaired doors at the Cosmopolitan, though he did not have an exact count.

In a Feb. 2 correction notice, a county inspector had identified problematic doors "on multiple levels and in multiple locations ... too numerous to specify." The inspector also documented a variety of problems with the doors, including gaps between the doors and frames. The deficiencies would have allowed smoke or flames to spread through the affected levels.

All the now-corrected doors are in lower parking levels of the Cosmopolitan, Franklin said Wednesday. The affected doors serve both the actual parking space and stairways from which people would exit the garage during an emergency. Construction workers can now use the space to park their own cars.

A Cosmopolitan spokesman, John T. Gallagher of Deutsche Bank, which owns the Cosmopolitan, on Wednesday declined, by e-mail from New York, to comment on the deficient work or its revisions.

But Franklin described the door repairs. "They added gaskets, sweeps. They realigned doors" within their frames. Workers also filled in holes left in the doors after latching hardware was changed.

The Cosmopolitan has not yet fixed deficient sealing of storm drain lines that will take away rainwater from the roof, Franklin said. The drain lines are the subject of a notice the county issued Jan. 29 to Perini Building Co.

The lines pass through ceiling and floors, but on certain levels workers did not correctly seal them. Sealing prevents the passage of smoke or flames through tiny floor or ceiling gaps around the lines.

"All of the work that's not done in compliance (with codes), that's important to us," Franklin said of the county's attitude toward correction notices, which most construction projects incur throughout the building process.

While the notices are a public record, Franklin said inspectors use them mainly to tell a general contractor about construction flaws. Inspectors aren't accustomed to news media scrutiny of the notices, and in some cases need to increase the precision of their wording, he said.

Contact reporter Joan Whitely at jwhitely@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0268.